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Grex > Info > #2: Intro to using trn to read Usenet News |  |
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| 25 new of 78 responses total. |
cwb
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response 25 of 78:
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Apr 15 00:38 UTC 1993 |
Ok, I dived into TRN last night, and I'm finally recovered. <g>
I've a few questions.
1. It seemed like I was subscribed to every blood y newsgroup in the
universe. Is there an easy way to unsub all, then re-subscribe to those I
want as I find them?
2. Does the 'k' command at thread selection mean that when the newsgroup
comes up again, I'll never see that thread again?
3. What happens to .newsrc if I get logged off in the middle?
4. Is the discrepancy in the number of articles trn says there are at
newsgroup level and thread level because the newsgroup level just gets the
index for the last article posted, while thread actually counts the
articles presently on Grex?
That's enough for now. Thanks.
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danr
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response 26 of 78:
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Apr 15 11:03 UTC 1993 |
1. If you only want to read a small number of groups, you could create
your own .newsrc file with the names of those newsgroups.
2. No. Hitting the "k" will only mark as read articles currently in
that thread. If someone replies to an article in that thread, you
will see that reply.
3. I think the only thing that happens is that the newsgroup your were
last reading may be incorrect. The .newsrc gets updated as you read
not when you quit trn.
4. I'll defer to mju on this question.
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cwb
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response 27 of 78:
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Apr 15 14:31 UTC 1993 |
Ok, then is there a way to kill a thread so I never see it again?
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glenda
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response 28 of 78:
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Apr 15 15:16 UTC 1993 |
To kill a thread so that you never see it again, type an upper case K the next
time you are in that thread. This will create a kill file that will reside in
your News directory until you actually remove it.
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cwb
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response 29 of 78:
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Apr 15 16:43 UTC 1993 |
Aha! For the first time the name kill file makes sense.
Now my next question. I've the sneaky suspicion this was discussed
somewhere else, but since I wasn't reading news at the time, I wasn't
paying atention. I enter news and find 1011 unread articles in mi.news.
When I go to the thread selector level, I get like 3 articles. It has
happened that I get prompted to read from groups with no unread articles,
even though TRN thinks there are articles there at the group selection
level. As a result, I get lots of groups that I shouldn't see. Can I do
anything about this? I seem to remember it having something to do with
the expire program.
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tsty
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response 30 of 78:
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Apr 15 17:28 UTC 1993 |
When I stared trn, knowing that the .newsrc was going to be long, I just
read a couple articles, got out and started deleting lines in
the .newsrc file.
In mistik's re #7, there is an indication that having edited out
a lot of lines, I should rm the .rnsoft file in adddition to
takingthe lines out of .newsrc.
kentn indicaates he deleted a lotof lines, but not that .rnsoft
got in the way anywhere after that. Could someone expound on this
a bit please?
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jared
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response 31 of 78:
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Apr 15 19:13 UTC 1993 |
there's also .rnlast
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cwb
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response 32 of 78:
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Apr 15 21:15 UTC 1993 |
By the way, K is not a legal command at the thread-selection level.
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mju
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response 33 of 78:
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Apr 15 22:17 UTC 1993 |
I thought I modified the program that sets up the .newsrc to only
subscribe you to grex.*, news.announce.newusers, and
news.newusers.questions. I'll have to take a look at it; perhaps
my changes were overwritten when we upgraded trn versions or something.
You can safely edit your .newsrc without removing any other files, as
long as you are not running trn when you edit it. Trn will automatically
sense that the soft pointers (held in .rnsoft) are out of date,
and revise them.
The discrepancy between the number of articles at the newsgroup
selection prompt, and the number of articles at the thread selection
prompt, is due to an interaction between C News, the "active" file,
and trn. The active file is the master list of all the newsgroups
on the system; it resides in /news/lib/active, and is maintained
by the news subsystem. Each newsgroup has a record in the active
file, consisting of the newsgroup name, the highest article number
in the newsgroup, the lowest article number in the newsgroup, and
a flag indicating the moderation status of the newsgroup. Because
it would complicate things a great deal, C News does not maintain
the third field of the active file (lowest article # in the group)
automatically. There is a separate program that can be run to do
this, but it consumes a lot of system resources while it's running.
So, when trn starts up and you read the group for the first time,
it assumes that all of the articles ever received by the system are
still present on the system, and tells you that there are 1100 unread
articles (or whatever). Once you go into the newsgroup, trn realizes
that there aren't that many articles, and updates your .newsrc so
you get a more-or-less correct number the next time you run trn.
The reason I (and the C News authors) don't consider this a large
problem, is that it is not correct to assume you can get the number
of articles in a newsgroup by subtracting the highest article number
from the lowest article number. i.e., the article range is not
guaranteed to be densely populated. It's quite possible that the
lowest-numbered article in a newsgroup is the FAQ posting, which
was posted a month or more ago with a 60-day expiration period.
The articles after it were normal articles, so they were deleted after
a few days; however, the FAQ posting has remained. So there is a
large hole in the newsgroup, which even updating the third field
of the active file will not remedy.
I don't believe you can kill a thread "for good" from the thread
selection level. (I'm not even sure what the 'k' command does
there, to tell you the truth.) From the article selection level,
though, you can kill threads, subjects, and articles both for
the current session and permanently. To kill a subject permanently,
hit K at the article selection prompt; that will kill the current
subject. To kill the current thread, use the T ("trash") command.
Killing a thread is like killing a subject, except a thread will
stay dead if the Subject: header changes, while the articles will
come back if the Subject: header changes (even if it's the same
thread).
There is a program called "EEP!" that claims to be a visual .newsrc
editor program. I'll have to see about getting it and installing
it on Grex sometime soon.
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cwb
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response 34 of 78:
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Apr 16 02:06 UTC 1993 |
Thanks Mark. That explanation makes sense, which is a rare and
wonderful commodity when you're a beginning news user. <g>
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cwb
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response 35 of 78:
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Apr 17 21:26 UTC 1993 |
Ok, I have several mor TRN question.
1. Am I correct in thinking that f and F post to the newsgroup, while r
and R send Email to the author of the specific article I'm replying to?
2. What are the differences between f and F? I understand that r and R
are analogous.
3. When referencing other articles, what id number should I use, since
the new-user's faq says that the number isn't a good reference?
4. Is there an easy way to quote an article to which I'm responding
without leaving TRN?
5. This is the most important. I need an efficient strategy to wade
through the masses of info, since I use speech and that means that it
takes me much longer to read an article than if I could read it visually.
I need to be able to A. use the thread selection capabilites of TRN, B.
weed out threads that I don't ever want to see again, preferably at the
thread selection level so I don't have to wade through the actual articles
and C. have this weeding process be permanent. The thread selection level
seems the best place for me to do this, but the trash command (which seems
to do what I want it to) is at article selection level. Any thoughts?
6. What does the -x command line switch that the docs rave on about
actually allow me to do?
Thanks in advance,
Chris
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mju
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response 36 of 78:
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Apr 17 23:11 UTC 1993 |
You're right that both "f" and "F" post an article, while "r" and
"R" send e-mail. They differ in that the lowercase version of the
command starts you out with a blank editor buffer, while the
uppercase version quotes the article to which you're replying and
puts that into the initial editor buffer.
The best way to refer to an article is by message-id, since that's
the only identification that stays constant across systems. The
message-id is given in the "Message-ID:" header of the article, and
is also included in the default attribution line used by trn when
you quote an article.
The -x switch turns on the thread-selector feature. It's understandable
that the manual page raves on about this, since it's the single
most significant improvement between rn and trn. -x is turned
on by default when you invoke the newsreader as "trn", and turned
off by default when you invoke it as "rn".
The best way that I can see to permanently trash a thread that
you never want to see again is to select it with the thread
selector, wait for the headers of the article to show up, and
then hit "T" (capital T, not lowercase t). That should trash
the thread and put it in your kill file.
You might want to experiment a bit with some of the low baud-rate
features of trn; they're probably appropriate regardless of whether
the actual baud rate limiter is in your modem or in the human
interface. In particular, look into the "-h" flag, which allows
you to hide header lines you're not interested in, and the "-i"
flag, which tells trn how many lines of the article to display
before displaying the first --More-- prompt.
I'm also very interested to know how you manage to use a program
with a "visual" (i.e., fullscreen) interface through a speech
synthesizer. In fact, if you'd like to enter an item about your
set-up as well as any problems you've encountered using it
with the software here on Grex, I'd love to read it.
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srw
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response 37 of 78:
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Apr 19 17:17 UTC 1993 |
Re: Way back to #11 thru #18 on the topic of Distribution. So far, I
have been using followups, and when I eventually do a post, I think
#11-#18 provide enough help for me. I noticed that Distribution is
blank when I do the followup. My question is: is it safe to assume
that if I leave it blank it will default to the same distribution
used by the article I'm responding to? It's the only thing that makes
sense, but ... well you know what happens when you ass/u/me. :)
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mju
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response 38 of 78:
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Apr 19 21:52 UTC 1993 |
A blank Distribution: header defaults to "world". Note that you should
make sure that you use a valid Distribution: when you post, since
mudos enforces fascist distribution policies. Remember, things like
"comp" and "rec" aren't distributions.
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srw
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response 39 of 78:
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Apr 20 04:09 UTC 1993 |
Right. Thanks. Glad I asked.
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cwb
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response 40 of 78:
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Apr 20 19:52 UTC 1993 |
Where can we find a listing of valid distributions?
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mju
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response 41 of 78:
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Apr 20 21:38 UTC 1993 |
The "Pnews" program has a list. Or I can give a list to you:
world, na, usa, mi, aa, gnu, inet, umich, local, grex
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robh
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response 42 of 78:
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Apr 20 22:11 UTC 1993 |
Would distribution "aa" include all edu, com, and org sites in the
Ann Arbor area, or just sites in the ann-arbor.mi.us domain?
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mju
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response 43 of 78:
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Apr 21 03:52 UTC 1993 |
They are geographically based, so it includes all sites in Ann Arbor.
(Although with the loose way some sites handle distributions, it
might include all the sites in Germany, too...)
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cwb
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response 44 of 78:
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Apr 22 23:10 UTC 1993 |
Most of those are obvious. I assume 'na' is North America, but what
are 'gnu' and 'inet'?
Thanks for the answers.
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mju
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response 45 of 78:
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Apr 23 00:43 UTC 1993 |
"gnu" is a distribution that covers all the sites that get the gnu.*
heirarchy. "inet" covers all the sites that get the "inet" groups,
a subset of the Usenet groups that used to be Internet mailing
lists and aren't considered part of "Usenet proper" by some people.
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cwb
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response 46 of 78:
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Dec 2 18:22 UTC 1993 |
This question concerns kill files. I am familiar with the `K' command
to permanently junk a thread. What other things can go in a kill file? Can
I nuke all articles by a specific user? What other filtering options do I
have to reduce the volume?
Thanks in advance.
Chris
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tsty
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response 47 of 78:
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Dec 6 11:39 UTC 1993 |
Somewhere I have the char string for erasing all posts from
a specific user - please email to tstest where that file
is kept.
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cwb
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response 48 of 78:
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Dec 17 22:59 UTC 1993 |
I've recently changed my .login shell from sh to csh. After some fiddling,
I've solved most of the little problems that come with that. But I've still
got one related to using TRN.
When I invoke my editor (jove), I have problems with my arrow keys. They
are declared unbound, almost as if my vt100 emulation had died on me. This
doesn't happen in any other use of Jove. What should I do? By the way,
this all worked just fine under sh.
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remmers
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response 49 of 78:
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Dec 18 10:04 UTC 1993 |
Strange. Behavior of arrow keys in an editor shouldn't have anything
to do with your login shell or with the program from which the editor
is invoked.
Jove looks in your .joverc file for arrow key bindings. Question: Is
it just the arrow keys that fail, or does everything set up in your
.joverc fail?
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